George G. Ritchie to Frederick Douglass, March 11, 1852
GEORGE G. RITCHIE1George Galvin Ritchie (1819–53) was a married father of three from Rochester, New York, when he became a theological student at Madison University, later Colgate University, in Hamilton, New York. In 1846 he founded the school’s first student newspaper, the Hamilton Student, but soon raised faculty ire by republishing abolitionist tracts written by Gerrit Smith. In January 1847 he wrote an editorial denouncing New York voters and the state’s religious press as either “pro-slavery in their sentiments” or “indifferent to the subject.” The school expelled Ritchie, but he continued to publish his weekly newspaper, renamed the Christian Reformer, until September 1847. He remained an active abolitionist in Baptist church and Liberty party circles until his death. Hamilton (N.Y.) Colgate University News, 15 May 1998. TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Utica, [N.Y.2The placeline of the letter also includes “Office American Baptist.” 11 March 1852].
DEAR DOUGLASS:—
I value your paper highly. When I requested you to send it to me, I proposed by way of remuneration to do what I could to promote its circulation and to send you an occasional article. The former I have done while traveling as an agent for the American Baptist Free Will Society.3Ritchie probably meant the American Baptist Free Mission Society. Founded in 1843 by a militant faction of the American Baptist Association Anti-Slavery Convention, the American and Foreign Baptist Missionary Society changed its name to the American Baptist Free Mission Society in 1846. The group claimed to have the only uncompromisingly abolitionist position in the denomination and attracted contributions from those dissatisfied with the approach of other Baptist missionary societies toward slavery. Ritchie himself was an agent of the organization. McKivigan, War against Proslavery Religion, 89, 99–101. When consulted by friends on the subject of their taking papers, I have invariably, I believe, recommended your paper as the best political paper in the country.—Some have, I suppose, on that account taken it. Having been recently appointed Corresponding Secretary of our Society, I shall not travel as extensively as heretofore, but shall have some time, perhaps, to send you a line
occasionally on that subject in which both of us feel so lively an interest—the freedom of the slave and the elevation of all men. If you can continue to send the paper on such terms, to one who is poor, because he has given himself to the cause for years, I shall be glad. If you cannot, please drop me a line here, (Utica,) and when I am able, I will forward the funds, for the paper I must have.
I have advised our editor4The American Baptist Free Mission Society published the American Baptist weekly in Syracuse, New York, from 1850 to 1871. William Cathcart, ed., The Baptist Encyclopedia: A Dictionary of the Doctrines, Ordinances, Usages, Confessions of Faith, Sufierings, Labors, and Successes, and of the General History of the Baptist Denomination in All Lands (Philadelphia, 1881), 415; McKivigan, War against Proslavery Religion, 99–101. to insert the whole of the Albany address;5The “Address to the People of the State of New York,” adopted by a black convention held in Albany in January 1852 and signed by the Reverend James W. C. Pennington, responded to critics of the state’s free black community by citing statistics to demonstrate the industry and frugality of African Americans. FDP, 5 February 1852. it is needed.—There is more ignorance on the topics it discusses, than people imagine. The idea is still prevalent that the colored race are degraded, and that, even when they have the opportunity of rising, they will not or cannot. Last Sunday at the close of a discourse in which I advocated the essential equality of the colored to the whites, a good deacon very gravely asked if it were not a fact that, the colored people of Massachusetts were still very degraded and immoral, though enjoying the advantages of free schools in common with the whites. But what could he expect from a man who reads only the New York Baptist Register,6The New York State Baptist Convention published the New-York Baptist Register in Utica from 1826 to 1855, a continuation of the Baptist Register (1824–26) and continued by the New-York Recorder and Register (1855). Cathcart, Baptist Encyclopedia, 850. and a country political paper?
Your remarks at Rhode Island7Douglass attended the annual meeting of the Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society in Providence on 6 November 1851. FDP, 20 November 1851. on the subject of personal religion met my most hearty approbation. I am glad to see, too, a religious article occasionally in your columns. From observation while traveling, I have concluded that that form of abolitionism which eschews a spiritual religion is not the form to be depended upon. Those who do this become lean. Nay, they lie out. They care neither for the slave nor any one else.—A pure religion—world embracing—is our hope. It is the hope of the slave, of the free, of the black, of the white.
Excuse this hasty scrawl, in the midst of many labors.
Your friend and brother,
GEORGE G. RITCHIE.
PLSr: FDP, 11 March 1852.